
Same old story, same old story. Another season of disappointment has finally come to an end, a season of ups and downs. Many Arsenal fans around the world still thought that this was a season to remember, a season when we finally managed to break our trophy duck… February was when all went wrong. Getting to the Carling Cup final, beating an almost “unbeatable” Barcelona on home soil, progressing in the FA Cup, and trailing Manchester United in second place, we looked set to have a season to remember.
Our season started to slip down drastically, a defensive mixed-up caused what seemed to be the easiest goal to win a final match. We lost against Birmingham, some gooners had imagined what it would feel like to be favourites and lose. We did lose. After that, it was predictable mental breakdown. Look at these players, they’re young and fragile. Imagine promising a big thing to a little child and then not fulfilling it.
Some optimistic fans (who weren’t many) could still move on and said, ‘Don’t worry, we still have 3 trophies to win’. Some desperate fans kept looking for a scapegoat they could blame on regarding the shocking loss. Jack Wilshere expressed his disappointment on his twitter account, everybody did. But they all sounded much less dejected than they looked, they tried to keep in mind that there were still 3 major trophies to win. Unfortunately, young players are young players. We were thrashed out of the FA Cup and Champions League in quick succession, and instead of overtaking United, we went further down to fourth.
Defense, if you asked most Arsenal fans, they would say that defense was our main issue, which was pretty much right. According to the statistics (as shown below), among the top 4 finishers, we conceded the most. We conceded 43 goals.
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|
1
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Manchester United
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80
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78:37
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2
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Chelsea
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71
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69:33
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3
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Manchester City
|
71
|
60:33
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4
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Arsenal
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68
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72:43
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2010/2011 season saw Laurent Koscielny, Johan Djourou, Sébastien Squillaci, and Thomas Vermaelen being our choices for centre back position, and with Thomas Vermaelen being sidelined for almost 8 months, it left us with only three of them being our centre back choices. Earlier in August 2010, Sébastien Squillaci finally signed for Arsenal from Sevilla, everybody expected him to be the typical French experienced defender that could be the answer to Arsenal’s weak defense. Despite wearing number 18, previously worn by Mikael Silvestre, he was believed not to end up the same way as Silvestre did. He was believed to offer physical presence and cope with aerial balls well, he was believed to be a star.
I am not into superstition, but 18 doesn’t seem a good kit number in Arsenal. Back to Squillaci’s story, he did SEEM to do well in 2010, Koscielny (who had partnered him most of the times) put in decent performance which apparently shadowed and blurred Squillaci’s error, but his true form was being slowly revealed going to 2011. An own goal to Wigan, 2 points wasted, a not necessary red card in an FA Cup match against Huddersfield, and some shaky moments. That doesn’t sound like how an experienced defender should perform.
Then Johan Djourou managed to rise up through the ranks, offering the “real” physical presence and height, he was often seen to deal with aerial balls very well. Injury hampered him again, everyone started to panic like he was the man whom we wouldn’t win without. That showed how important Johan was. I said “was”, because in the last 3 fixtures, he wasn’t himself anymore.
Defensive uncertainty has been a MAJOR issue within Arsenal FC, several players were brought in and were hoped to put it straight. Mikael Silvestre, Sebastien Squillaci, Laurent Koscielny, Thomas Vermaelen, even a member of the “Invincibles”, Sol Campbell was re-signed. They were all hoped to form a strong defensive line. But the fact had never been unusual, NO players could even be half as good as Tony Adams or Steve Bould. In fact, Squillaci and Silvestre are the worst flop ever. All Arsenal fans had been moaning about our defenders not being able to deal with set-pieces. Going into statistics, their complaint was proved to be right. According to Opta Joe, we condeded a higher proportion of goals from set-pieces (53.5%) this season than any other in the Premier League. I’m not a person who takes information straight away, I did my own research and going through our 43 goals conceded in 2010/2011 season.
It may be useless and a little stupid for me not to believe the stats Opta Joe gave us, but my research went a bit shocking. All I know about set-pieces is when the ball is played after stoppage, such as corner kicks, throw-ins, free-kicks, and penalties (can’t mention more than those). I did go through all the goals and I COULD be very wrong but here is the result…
Goals conceded through open play=
– Liverpool’s 1st (A)
– Blackburn Rovers’ 1st (A)
– Bolton’s 1st (H) *through header
– All West Brom’s 3 goals (H)
– Chelsea’s 1st (A)
– Birmingham’s 1st (H) *through header
– Spurs’ 1st (H)
– Fulham’s 1st (H)
– Aston Villa’s 1st (A)
– United’s 1st (A) *through header
– Everton’s 1st (H)
– West Brom’s 2nd (A)
– Blackpool’s 1st (A)
– Spurs’ 1st and 2nd (A)
– Stoke’s 2nd and 3rd (A)
– Aston Villa’s 1st and 2nd (H)
– Fulham’s 1st (A)
– Fulham’s 2nd (A) *through header
– Newcastle’s 2nd (A)
That already counts 24 goals conceded through open play. I’m saying this one more time, this is only relevant to my own understanding of open-play which I have a big chance to be wrong about. Now, going to our goals conceded through set-pieces
Goals conceded through set-pieces=
– Chelsea’s 2nd (A) *Alex’s free-kick
– Newcastle’s 1st (H) *Carroll’s header
– Everton’s 1st (A) *Cahill’s goal started out from a corner-kick
– Spurs’ 2nd (H) *Van Der Vaart’s penalty kick
– Spurs’ 3rd (H) *Kaboul’s header from a free-kick
– Villa’s 2nd (A) *Ciaran Clark’s header started out from a corner-kick
– Chelsea’s 1st (H) *Ivanovic’s header from a free-kick
– Wigan’s 1st (A) *A penalty
– Wigan’s 2nd (A) *Squillaci’s own goal
– Newcastle’s 1st (A) *Barton’s penalty kick
– Newcastle’s 3rd (A) *Barton’s penalty kick
– Newcastle’s 4th (A) *Tiote’s volley started out from a half cleared free-kick
– West Brom’s 1st (A) *header from a corner-kick
– Liverpool’s 1st (H) *controversial penalty-kick
– Spurs’ 3rd (A) *penalty kick
– Bolton’s 1st (A) *Sturridge scored an indirect goal from a corner-kick
– Bolton’s 2nd (A) *their winning goal, a header from a corner-kick
– Stoke’s 1st (A) *Jones’ goal from a free-kick
– Sunderland’s 1st (A) *Bent’s goal, started out from a free-kick
19 goals were conceded through set-pieces. I’m just giving my opinions of set-pieces goals, I would really love to receive any objections regarding my observation. Feel free to leave comments.
2010/2011 season also saw us conceding 9 penalty kicks, in which 2 were saved (Manuel Almunia’s save in a game against WBA and Szczesny’s save against Bolton), 1 was missed (Rooney’s penalty miss), and 6 were scored.
If my data is correct , then where did Opta Joe get that percentage from? I really want to see where I did wrong. And again, now a big “IF”, if my data is correct, let me put it this way… our defensive weakness didn’t only highlight in set-pieces, but pretty much our open play defense was something to fix.
Apart from my argument, I personally believe, unless Arsene splashed the cash on some decent defenders, we would be likely to stretch our trophy less season.
Written by Rhesa Ananta